A new home in the fediverse

After a year and half since joining Mastodon, I have made social.coop my place in the fediverse. You can follow me there at ggpsv@social.coop.

I’m happy to be part of a server funded and governed by its members.

Joining the fediverse

I, like many others, stopped using Twitter sometime during 2022. The experience was no longer a positive one for me. That’s it.

At the time Mastodon was making the rounds so I figured I may as well check it out. I looked at the list of servers and bookmarked a few¹ whose local timeline resonated with me. I still wasn’t sure about the whole thing, so I settled for mastodon.social to start. After all, you can migrate your account across servers.

And so, a whooping year and a half later, I’ve made the switch.

social.coop

social.coop is one of the servers that I had originally bookmarked. I kept looking at its timeline from time to time, and followed accounts that I found interesting.

What drew my attention is that the community is organized as a cooperative. This means that, as a member, I contribute to the server’s upkeep, but also take part in its governance. As a result, I expect that incentives are better aligned for everyone involved. This is in stark contrast to how things have panned out in other social media platforms².

Thoughts on a splintered social media scene

There is something that I’ve noticed in conversations about the current state of social media. It is stated that Mastodon doesn’t stand a chance to become the next thing. I find this notion confusing as it somewhat misses the point of Mastodon and the fediverse at large.

Federated and decentralized social media platforms such as Mastodon are not out there to become the thing³. It succeeds if it provides people the means to have more agency over their social media experience. I count myself among those who have found in it a better place. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s fine. At least we get to have a choice.